III. EDUCATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE BASIC EDUCATIONAL NEEDS FOR
LIVING TOGETHER IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURYAnalysis of political, social, economic, cultural, scientific and media trends and interdependence help us form our definition of the basic requirements for learning to live together, but it is by examining educational trends that we gain a better understanding and collective appreciation of the means by which they may be maintained.
In the previous pages, we have proposed several approaches to the different ways in which basic learning needs are being shaped by the most visible changes at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We have identified a number of transverse issues, which are linked to the two major debates, to the two principal discussion units and to the six workshops of the ICE's forty-sixth session. In the following pages we will propose a number of hypotheses on the ways in which education is facing up to these requirements. These hypotheses will either be confirmed or subject to review after the Conference.
1. Quantitative advances for learning to live together
The latest country and world reports on education show that schooling rates have progressed. The estimated total of children without schooling has fallen from 127 million in 1990 to 113 million in 1998. The number of literate adults has increased from 2.7 to 3.3 billion in 1998. Currently global literacy rates are 85% for men and 74% for women. Despite these advances, late access to schooling, grade repeats and leaving school before a sound educational base is complete -with all the familiar consequences for self-esteem- together with adult illiteracy, continue to be major problems. The number of children without minimal skills for getting by in life remains high and there are an estimated 880 million adults who cannot read or write. In addition, two thirds of illiterate adults are women, the same proportion as ten years ago.
RESPONSES TO THE EDUCATION NEEDS OF THE YOUNG FOR MORE SUCCESSFUL LEARNING TO LIVE TOGETHER
Learning to live together requires more time and a better basic education than has been previously available. The concept of basic education does not equate with that of primary education: it describes the type of education necessary for a better quality of life and lifelong learning in an increasingly complex world replete with both positive opportunities and obstacles. It involves the idea of the “ platform ” or “ foundation ”, of “ soundness ” but also of “ usefulness for living” and of “ motivation for continuing to learn ”. The number of years provided by traditional primary education is not enough for building this platform. Also, what should we do for young people who have not managed to complete their curricula?
When we refer to a better quality of basic education for the twenty-first century, the option “ of doing the same thing for longer ” will not do. We must plan for a different education, which is no longer a simple improved version of what has been inherited from the past. This perspective is particularly important for secondary education.
Institutions operating similar timetables despite their varied situations, overloaded syllabuses, compartmentalized disciplines, mainly focused on encyclopaedic knowledge, forty minute course units and a uniform offer, irrespective of the diversity of students' personalities and their stages in life -for example for young adults- are no longer convincing as adequate learning environments for learning to live together.
The young people themselves are aware of both aspects of the issue. To obtain more basic instruction time, they try to extend their time in the educational system; so that in different regions of the world, they are striving to gain access to secondary education, while showing in different ways their increasing discontent in this respect. Surely the various forms of violence prevalent among them or directed against teaching staff are a clear illustration of this phenomenon?
If we succeed in inventing new basic education models, tailored to the needs of young people and directed towards learning “ to live together more successfully ”, especially in poverty situations, will we not also enhance economic, social and political development and strengthen values? Are there positive lessons to be drawn from this area of innovative experiences and successful educational and intersectorial policies?
For all the advances achieved in reducing inequalities, significant educational disparities persist; they mainly concern poor or isolated communities, ethnic minorities, women and girls.
Empirical data indicate that although advances have been very substantial in some countries or regions, in others population growth, rapid changes, wars or other complex socio-economic, political and educational factors have obstructed the education access process.
New problems are also appearing in countries which are not considered poor, such as ghetto-schools for immigrant children or for children from well-off families and a marked trend towards “ specific” schooling with the effect that the population's opportunities for encountering the daily life of “different people” are becoming increasingly rare.
Educational integration must be assured so that -while respecting freedom of choice- every person may have opportunities to access enriching educational experiences, among their different peers, for lifelong learning firmly focused, in each individual's personal career, on values of humanity, community and solidarity.
Two questions arise in this respect. The first concerns the external conditions needed for ensuring this integration. According to the first national reports received as part of the preparatory work for the ICE's forty-sixth session, during the 1990s, several countries were especially concerned to implement educational policies and tools aimed at counteracting disadvantageous socio-economic conditions through partnership programmes with communities, provision of low-cost teaching means, creation of 'priority education zones', etc. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that such measures are not sufficient.
The second question concerns the limitations of educational reforms based on the 'institutional architecture' and management methods. The possible impact of these reforms seems to have been overestimated. Research provides examples analysing the limitations of measures aimed at decentralization, unilateral promotion of educational self-management, change in education system study programmes and encouragement of privatization.
So we need to develop a different educational offer in order to satisfy the learning requirements for living together more successfully.
2. Acknowledging the challenge involved in improving quality of education for learning to live together
THE DAKAR FORUM AND QUALITY OF EDUCATION FOR ALL
The Dakar Forum and the 2000 Education for All Assessment which preceded it emphasised “quality education for all”. In the decade since Jomtien substantial progress has been made in many places regarding access to education—although many inequalities and disparities still exist between regions and countries and also within many countries. But the effects of this quantitative expansion on the development of individuals, communities and societies have fallen far short of the ambitions and objectives set at Jomtien. The Dakar Forum stressed the need for developing quality education, as a component which cannot be separated from access, equality and equity. Many different factors contribute to improving quality; the Dakar Forum identified several, including the importance of, “organizing the contents of basic education in order to attain society's needs and values”: ““ The economic, social and other changes sweeping through human society in recent years have forced a reconsideration of what knowledge, skills and values are needed for successful living. The movement toward more open and democratic societies has created a need for learning that goes beyond the academic curriculum and factual knowledge to emphasize problem-solving and open-ended enquiry. The expansion of communication and information technologies necessitates more inter-active and exploratory forms of learning, and the increased pace of change has put a premium on the need to engage in continuous learning over a lifetime. There is also a new urgency to ensure that education at all levels and in all places reinforces a culture of peace, tolerance and respect for human rights ” (12).
So the issue is not only to provide an educational offer “for all”, but “ quality education for all” and also to improve this quality by taking better stock of its complexity.
Quality of education is becoming an increasingly central question on world and national education agendas. It has become very apparent that better access to education unaccompanied by quality learning, was a “hollow victory”.
Although a great deal had been said and written about quality of education over recent decades, the concept remains difficult to define. By way of simplification, we can say that some writers place more emphasis on quantitative results while others stress the conditions and learning processes leading to them. The two angles are of course closely linked.
From the perspective of the promotion of human rights and development, quality of education may be defined as the ability to learn to live together, both from the viewpoint of results in terms of acquired skills and willingness for living together, and the conditions and processes which contribute to this acquisition.
Knowing how, being able and wishing to participate, master languages, be scientifically and technologically literate are undoubtedly indicators of quality of education for all for living together more successfully. The investigation field for collection data on these indicators is very complex; research into education finds itself before an immense challenge. It has made it possible to know more concerning acquired skills relative to conceptual learning and concerning a number of representations. But it is proving much more difficult to establish whether education has enabled individuals to acquire skills relating to their emotional side and willpower.
In addition, results from research into acquired skills do not seem to have yet been sufficiently applied, either in learning management processes, schools and other institutions or educational environments or at political decision-making levels.
From the management of learning processes and high-level decision-making viewpoint, the research results are a step forward for enhanced learning to live together. Comparative analyses of available studies from different world regions agree on the importance a number of factors which help to shape a favourable school environment for learning, such as: consensus on the meaning of education, the desire to attain clearly defined and mutually agreed standards and goals, teacher motivation, access to good teaching materials, community and parent participation, planning in partnership, quality of management, staff continuity, placing better teachers in school primary grades, training strategies and maximum exploitation of school time. They also agree on underlining the importance of “a relevant curriculum ” or “ carefully prepared and co-ordinated syllabuses” and of “ dynamic and solid support from the competent educational authority”.
Therefore, the curriculum appears to be one of the most important guiding resources which countries can use to ensure “dynamic and solid support from the competent educational authority ”.
So it is perfectly understandable that questions concerning curricula, are in one form or another, the focus of education thinking, debate and policies worldwide. What should we teach? How do we organise educational processes? How do we reconcile the demands involved in all the educational needs for more successful living together? How do we make progress when there is so much disparity between countries? Over the last decade, some countries have made great progress, others less, and others none.
3. Towards a new curriculum design
At the beginning of the 1980s, study programmes and syllabuses were, in most countries and in a certain sense, meagre, rigid mechanisms. They referred to only some of the elements involved in educational processes and did so by defining rigid methods. As awareness grew of the need to take into account changes in courses and the complexity of education, they were drawn away from the regimentation of pyramidal, hierarchical systems designed to maintain a type of stratification and an outdated socioeconomic, political and cultural ethos.
Reading the first national reports submitted to the forty-sixth session of the ICE , we find that most countries are endeavouring to make progress in the design of a new type of guidance material: the curriculum. The curriculum is conceived both as a contract between what society expects from education and what education managers agree it should offer in terms of teaching contents and educational support, and as a working tool in schools and classrooms. A contract and a tool which are difficult to construct and even more difficult to use creatively to influence school life, but also a contract and a tool which are very influential, for example in the production of teaching material, such as text books, CD-ROMs etc. This influence also extends to the media and to a number of Internet productions.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in their enthusiasm to do away with former dictates and to take on board diversity, some new curricula were based on very expansive and at the same time very open ideas. As it turned out only some schools were able to adapt to such systems. According to a number of national reports, the direction “ to leave schools free ” to choose their contents and teaching methodologies in some cases detrimentally affected schools and education, putting under-trained teachers into more difficult working conditions, without the resources to cope with very complex and rapidly-changing situations.
So the apparent result was not the creativity expected but, in some cases, to a decline in the quality of learning for students. Concerned by some of the said processes -in particular the widening of inequalities-, numerous authorities responsible for designing curricula have decided, in recent years, to implement a new type of curricular structure, which focuses both on creating guides for teachers and students, and on innovative coaching processes intended to facilitate what is increasingly known as “curricular development ” in schools.
In this respect, a number of national reports stress the need to move towards curricula capable of fostering the integration, sense of belonging and creativity of each school and each teacher.
These trends are emerging at the same time as a movement towards giving greater legitimacy and better quality to official curricula by modifying their definition processes and their proposals.
4. Rewriting curricula together in order to learn to live together: promoting participation in curricular decisions
Some national reports prepared for ICE's forty-sixth session show that, in recent years, curriculum drafting processes have favoured or tried to combine three basic logics: an expertise logic, a strategic logic and a project logic.
The expertise logic is characterised by the fact the curriculum's preparation is entrusted to experts (or to a single expert) who advance in a very precise direction, without encountering obstacles when preparing the curriculum (or if they do so they can redirect them, either by applying their political or scientific influence). The strategic logic consists in seeking a balance between divergent trends and interests, in contexts in which the curriculum represents a power stake for the actors involved. The project logic emphasises the fact that the actors construct the curriculum gradually, following a drawn out process, based on participatory stages for preparing projects.
The new elaboration mechanisms attempt to take into account several factors, for example the fact that currently a great deal of knowledge is not acquired from school but from other institutions with either physical or symbolic output (media, businesses of all kinds, associative movements, etc.). Their principal focus consists in involving new actors in the curriculum definition processes. Unfortunately, we still have insufficient detail on the characteristics in learning terms of these mechanisms, from the all the authorities and professional teams involved.
Those countries which try to combine the expertise, strategic and project logics, through this combination mobilize all the actors involved more effectively and make a more definitive commitment towards achieving results.
Choosing to reform curricula by associating authorities, experts, social partners and teachers is not an easy task. Which tensions need to be overcome? Which strategies put in place? What are its costs? What relation is there between the costs of the various processes and their benefits?
5. Proposals for learning to live together in the new curricula
From a brief analysis of the first national reports prepared for the ICE's forty-sixth session, the new curricular strategies -in the regions where the most promising processes are underway- comprise a series of general features and a set of guidelines specific to each field of knowledge.
On initial examination the general features seem to show a convergence of basic education systems towards training in “ skills ”, identifying a number of basic contents (in the broad sense, namely content-products, content-processes and content-values), setting standards for these contents, seeking out a structure encouraging inter- and multi-disciplinary teaching practices rather than fragmentation, promoting a new form of educational support (including school life methods and characteristics) which places students at the centre of the learning process and accords importance to team work and acknowledgement of student diversity.
Awareness of the accelerating obsolescence of encyclopaedic knowledge and the conviction that it is very important to “ learn to learn ” are prompting an intense effort to identify and construct “ skills ”. This trend is a reaction following on the realization of the limits of widely spread and still very prevalent traditional teaching methods.
In some countries “ skill ” is understood as the ability of individuals “ to do, think and at the same time to create value ”; skills produce the developments which motivate the creativity and values bound up with living together, by also fostering those abilities which enable us to deal both with daily life and higher intellectual aptitudes.
The new outlook stresses the need to concentrate on acquiring and mastering learning and know-how defined in terms of skills and key skills, rather than in terms of contents divided up into disciplines organized into a certain number of teaching periods. By concentrating on learning in order to find the best ways of managing teaching, by promoting “ learning acquired by doing ”, we will be in a position give meaning to knowledge and to guide the selection and organization of teaching contents. As one national report puts it, the challenge is to contribute to “ transforming information into wisdom and well-being”.
The very structure of syllabuses and study programmes would be transformed, together with teaching stages, evaluation and role of teachers, organization of school time and even management of the system. To react against fragmentation of learning, some curricula are encouraging the creation of fields instead of disciplines. For example they propose to replace history, geography and sociology by a field known as “ social sciences”. These trends are in some cases opposed, by both recognised educationalists and by teachers, especially at secondary level.
Making learning the focus of curricular recommendations sets up new challenges for teaching methods. Some reports pose the question of how renewal may be implemented and the potential risk of “ emptying ” educational practices. They also ask how teachers' experience is to be considered, at times connected with possibilities of using traditional teaching methods, which produce a result, albeit limited.
Other changes refer to the way in which each knowledge area should be approached. Many countries have seen progress in the implementation of communicative approaches for language teaching, and in bilingual or multilingual teaching. In mathematics, formalist proposals are giving way to contents linked to probability, statistics and to applications of mathematics for forming interpretation models. In social sciences, proposals aimed at the teaching of processes have gained ground, at the expense of simple transmission of ideas. Efforts devoted to initiating boys and girls in multiperspectivity and respectful confrontation of ideas (in particular in social sciences such as history and geography) have been redoubled The concept of scientific literacy is developing. Environmental perspectives have advanced. In physical education, militaristic methods are being increasingly abandoned in favour of more wide-ranging training (sport for all, health, etc.). In artistic education greater stress is being placed on personal production and creativity given the realization that artistic and creative skills will in the future play a growing role in the individual, social and professional life of persons.
Several national reports recognise that the changes in these ways of approaching knowledge areas seem as difficult to carry out in practice as the four general changes mentioned above.
Curricula, capable of becoming effective guidelines and tools for more successful learning to live together should take into consideration factors concerning education objectives, learning strategies and the criteria for choice and organization of contents, while promoting systematic changes and modernising the framework for each discipline and each level.
In several cases, the processes underway to renew learning proposals take into account innovations introduced in programmes, countries and educational institutions, or even in other regions. Almost all the national reports presented as part of the ICE's preparatory work refer to “ good practices ”. But they also refer to the difficulties encountered in promoting changes which affect all schools and their relations with the media, families and society in general. The forty-sixth session of the ICE will provide the opportunity to examine a number of these “ good practices ” and to reflect on their conditions for success, their problems and their transferability.
6. Progress and obstacles in school life for learning to live together
A wide range of actors and sectors involved in education are increasingly questioning the slowness, difficulties and limited character of large-scale changes in education. Some of the ideas, concepts and practices which are beginning to influence education for learning more successfully to live together are not at all new. They date back several decades or even a century: interest and motivation, the activity of the student, primacy of learning over teaching, group work, individualization of learning, co-operative work, the role of the teacher as a mediator of knowledge rather than as a simple transmitter, etc. How has it happened that it has taken so long to introduce changes of this type? Why have commitments made not been carried through to their conclusion more often?
To answer these questions, several hypotheses may be advanced: insufficient financial resources, absence of political concern for the importance of educational changes, apathy and disinterest on the part of teachers or, conversely, lack of emphasis on their key role in educational systems and, consequently, in any effort to improve the quality of education.
Undoubtedly, factors connected with all the above dimensions, and with others, are present in each situation in which change takes place. Each situation is marked by the “spirit of the time”, and also interrelates with other contexts, through mechanisms of interpenetration of ideas and expertise, but is in its turn unique and complex. This is why each situation requires at the same time unique solutions which consider its complexity, take advantage of interpenetration and experiences, without however succumbing to fads or transferring without a critical attitude proposals originating from other contexts.
Each education system and each educational institution constitutes a very complex universe of elements linked by multiple relationships and able, in interaction with their environment, to adapt, evolve, learn and to self-organise. But each education system and each school also present, in their functioning, a certain number of specific elements which seem to strongly condition their capacity -or their incapacity- to learn more successfully to live together.
Can we assume that the ability to network within the system, with other partners, with society and with other systems is the key to the various capacities for change? Or is it the capacity of ministries to guide changes and the technical capacities of planners, technicians, educationalists and teachers which make the difference? Are the same factors always involved? Do they affect all the levels in which changes are desired: in the system, in the schools, in the relation between the education system, schools, media and society?
12. World Forum on Education, Final Report, Dakar, UNESCO, 2000 p. 20 (Back)
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Last update:2-08-2001